Emotional Intelligence and Self-Awareness: Feeling, Not Fixing
When Awareness Isn’t Enough
Not long ago, my husband Matt and I were talking about couples therapy, parenting, and what healing has looked like for each of us. We’ve both been learning how to show up for our kids differently — with the kind of understanding we wish we’d experienced growing up.
At one point I said, “I try to think about how my child wants to be spoken to, heard, or seen in that moment.” I didn’t think much of it, but later Matt told me that line stuck with him. It helped him slow down, breathe, and approach parenting differently.
That moment reminded me how emotional intelligence and self-awareness often get confused — we think knowing our triggers is enough, but real growth happens when we can also feel them. Awareness had become my comfort zone. Embodiment was what I was missing.
Emotional Intelligence and Self-Awareness
Most people use emotional intelligence and self-awareness interchangeably, but they aren’t identical.
Self-awareness means you can observe yourself clearly — you can name your thoughts, notice your patterns, and even predict how you’ll react. It’s reflective.
Emotional intelligence means you can work with what you’re feeling in real time — with yourself and others. It’s responsive.
One happens in your head; the other happens in your body.
Our culture tends to reward self-awareness because it sounds polished and introspective. We’ve learned to intellectualize emotions rather than embody them. The problem is, understanding your emotions doesn’t regulate your nervous system — only feeling them safely does.
This is what emotional intelligence and self-awareness look like in motion — presence instead of performance.
How Hyper-Awareness Becomes Hypervigilance
For many intelligent or high-achieving women — and especially for those of us who are neurodivergent — awareness can become a form of protection. We overanalyze as a way to feel in control. We anticipate everyone’s emotions before they happen. We stay “one step ahead” because that’s how we learned to stay safe.
In practice, it looks like:
- Overexplaining during conflict to avoid being misunderstood
- Rehearsing conversations in your head
- Feeling responsible for everyone else’s emotions
- Struggling to relax, even when things are fine
- Saying things in therapy like, “I just can’t turn my brain off,” or “I know I’m a perfectionist, but that’s how I survive.”
These aren’t flaws — they’re coping mechanisms. But they can leave you living in constant alert mode. That constant alert state is part of what I once called my freeze response — a topic I unpack more deeply in Fear in Silk Robes: When Stillness Isn’t Surrender. True emotional intelligence invites you to turn that awareness inward with compassion, not control.
The Moment I Stopped Trying to Understand and Started Trying to Feel
Once I saw that distinction, I realized I’d been trying to think my way into healing. I could name every trigger, but naming wasn’t the same as processing.
When my body tightened or my chest felt heavy, my instinct was to explain it — to myself, to Matt, to anyone who’d listen. But real regulation didn’t happen until I stopped explaining and started listening — to my breath, my shoulders, my tone.
It wasn’t about perfection. It was about presence.
7 Steps to Cultivating Embodied Emotional Intelligence
These are the practices that helped me bring emotional intelligence out of my head and into my daily life. They’re not rigid rules — they’re gentle shifts that make space for feeling instead of fixing.
1. Pause Before You Fix It
When discomfort rises, don’t rush to analyze it. Notice your breathing, unclench your jaw, or even step outside for air. Slowing down helps your body understand that it’s safe to pause before solving.
2. Notice What You Feel, Not Just What You Think
Our first reaction is often to explain why something happened. Instead, tune into how it feels — heat in your chest, tension in your shoulders, tightness in your throat. Your body carries messages your mind tries to translate.
3. Loosen Your Body’s Grip
When you feel defensive or overwhelmed, your body often tightens first. Move, stretch, shake out your hands, or take a deeper breath. These small resets teach your nervous system that emotions can move through you instead of getting stuck.
4. Give Your Feelings Permission
Awareness often turns into judgment — “I shouldn’t feel this way,” or “I should know better.” Replace that with, “It makes sense that I feel this way.” Compassion softens the edges of self-control and creates space for self-trust.
5. Cool Off Before You Communicate
Before addressing conflict, take a moment to regulate. Walk, breathe, or ground yourself. Emotional intelligence doesn’t mean suppressing emotions — it means choosing your response from stability, not survival.
6. Circle Back When You’re Ready
Repairing isn’t about getting it perfect — it’s about showing up again. Sometimes the most emotionally intelligent thing you can say is, “I wasn’t at my best earlier. Can we try again?” That’s where connection grows.
7. Keep Practicing Small Moments of Presence
Meditation taught me that stillness doesn’t always look like sitting cross-legged in silence. Sometimes it’s washing dishes without rushing or noticing sunlight through a window. Stillness isn’t emptiness — it’s enoughness.
These small practices help emotional intelligence become embodied rather than conceptual. They’re how you stay connected to yourself even in motion.
Sometimes emotional regulation starts with sensory grounding — even something as simple as a weighted eye mask or lavender neck wrap can help your body remember it’s safe to slow down.
Integrating Emotional Intelligence Into Everyday Life
Each of these steps helped me shift from self-analysis to self-regulation. It wasn’t about adding new tools — it was about trusting the ones I already had: my breath, my body, my awareness.
If you’re ready to explore these ideas more deeply, the Self-Healing Relationship Journal was designed to help you turn awareness into integration — using reflection prompts that help you regulate and reconnect instead of overanalyze.
And for smaller, everyday grounding, the Gratitude Journal is a simple, open space to slow down, reflect, and anchor gratitude in real time — a quiet pause that helps your nervous system settle back into the present.
Both are available through the Enjoy Expansion shop.
Final Reflection
That conversation with Matt reminded me that emotional intelligence is less about knowing and more about connecting — with ourselves, our bodies, and each other.
When we slow down enough to feel, we don’t just shift our own nervous systems — we reshape the energy of our homes. We speak softer. We listen deeper. We become the kind of presence we once needed.
And that’s the quiet power of feeling, not fixing.
If you’re learning to name what you feel, Atlas of the Heart by Brené Brown offers a beautiful language for understanding emotion without judgment.
Explore More in:
October 29, 2025
Be the first to comment